I see Thomas Jung and Brian McKellar both there again, how many of you remember when these blogs where first written? Both of these actually helped me solve many a problem at work when they came out. The printouts of these two blogs were added to a folder of “Valuable Documents” and most likely are still referred to off and on. This was a topic, I LOVE Open Source—Really!, close at hand for me when http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/u/6806 [original link is broken][original link is broken][original link is broken][original link is broken][original link is broken][original link is broken] wrote it, we had just gone live with our Community Projects when all this controversy came up and Shai was there to jump in and actually talk about here on SDN with all of us!

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/u/34500 [original link is broken][original link is broken][original link is broken][original link is broken][original link is broken][original link is broken] has done a tremendous job with the upkeep of this blog, despite all the radical changes we’ve made to the weblog system and all the HTML coding that no longer is valid. Thanks Michal! Watch out in the next month or so Michal will be featured in the Contributor’s Corner as our latest spotlight! Now to the matter at hand! Not much happens on SDN without the community speaking up and out about it, weblogs are one of those areas which are constantly under the microscope. I am rather surprised though it took so many entries in the series before the community spoke up? It seems the weblogs are always under fire for quality which is interesting as it’s the one area where the community is free to comment on each and every single entry, we even have our myWeblogs (Beta) area where each person has the ability to rate the bloggers. Problem though is that this not really a rating of content but rather of author and topic areas in order for you to receive your customized list or email of what’s what. Similiar to DevToday where you can get a customized email dealing with the areas that interest you the most. So why did I write this series which in truth should have been called Most Viewed weblogs of all time, simply because and as stated Top Weblogs of All Time [8 to 4] in the comments of a previous entry, it’s simply too hard to gage the blogs in terms of quality, “good” or “bad” and espically not over such a large period of time. Not sure if it will interest anyone but I can say that most every single weblog in this list was featured on a homepage somewhere if not the main SDN homepage as well as in either the SDN newsletter or the SDN Blog Newsletter. But back to the bottom line, and to the point of this series, SDN is commited to quality and not quantity, has been since as long as I’ve been a member and there are lots of blogs that never get posted. Many have so many revisions it’s hard to keep track before they hit publication. The point folks is that we at SDN can only do so much, we need your input for keeping quality at the highest level. This means that we need your objective opinions about the blogs when they are published. The authors are going to have to learn that quality is number one! Now this doesn’t mean you have to tear everything to shreds, you have to keep in mind that there are many levels to knowledge and something you might consider to simplistic may in fact be a life saver for someone else. Also remember that sometimes general knowledge out there like Eddy’s diligence in keeping us up to date on browsers are actually very useful to web developers including BSPers, PHPers and Web Dynpro’ers. So when you are reading the blogs please comment on those you have knowledge in. I mean, me as a BSPer and PHPer, I am not going to go and make lots and lots of comments about the knowledge shared in an XI weblog. We also don’t want just random “hey great job man” from all of your coworkers. This is your community and it get’s better with your input, so be honest and fair! This also means that starting February 15, 2006, blogs will receive the initial 40 points, however no additional points will be given until the blog has been “live” for at least 5 days. This way we can get a better idea for the blog and give more time for a better evaluation and community feedback. This may not exactly be what has been Where is the original content in the weblogs for in the past or recently but it’s a start, so help us to help you!

3 Comments

There would probably be less comments that just express thanks and recognition if we could optionally rate individual blog postings.

For example, I find Thomas Jung’s weblogs a good read and I’d like to let him know, but don’t want to fill comments with such fluff. A simple rating allows me to do that whilst retaining the comments for true commentary.

MSDN does this quite well. Here’s a sample link chosen simply because it’s one of the first links currently on the MSDN landing page.